By Vic Cox

Feeling pressure to decide on permit rate increases and hindered by a lack of faculty representation, the staff and student members of the Parking Ratepayers’ Board earlier this month asked Chancellor Henry Yang to speed up appointments to the two empty faculty seats on the nine-member panel.

Ian Rhodes’ term on the board expired earlier this year and Hal Drake’s resignation was accepted last month by the chancellor. By press time, no replacements had been announced for either faculty representative.

Sharon Conley, professor of education, is currently on sabbatical and last attended a board meeting in March. She did e-mail her preference on general parking permit rates to board Chair Logan Green during an electronic poll last month and has told him she would try to attend crucial meetings.

A discussion with campus event organizers over their concerns about any increase in evening or weekend parking costs also began this month. Parking rate planning models developed by the Office of Administrative Services have assumed a $1 a space increase to a total of $3, starting in 2005-06.

Present to lobby against any such increase were a score of event organizers. Arts & Lectures Director Celesta Billeci said she had seen a decline in film series attendance since the $2 fee was instituted for evening parking in July 2003. Raising the cost to attend campus films, which now run $6 for general admission, plus parking, is counterproductive, she argued. “Down the road, it’ll kill the film series,” warned Billeci.

Added Constance Penley, professor of film studies and codirector of the privately funded Center for Film, Television, and New Media, “I’m concerned that the new theater we have planned, and for which we are already programming, will not be viable” when it opens in 2007.

Since February, the board has been sorting through parking income and expense information and new rate options provided to them by Parking and Transportation staff and administrative services. The original expectation presented to the board last year was that the basic $35 a month parking permit—a cost that has not risen since July 2000—would jump $8 to $43 a month ($516 a year) to finance construction of Campus Parking Structure 3, which broke ground in February.

Now the Ratepayers’ Board is weighing the consequences of increasing permit fees by a much lower range, from $1 to $3 a month, after the recalculation of a number of factors ranging from debt service interest to expanding the timeline for permit rate increases to changing which budget pays the parking director’s salary.

Increasing charges to events organizers for parking services and spaces is part of all the options so far, but that was before event managers were invited to the table.